Wicked (4 page)

“It’s not my place to tell.” She takes back her arm. “Ask your father.”

“My father?” Yes! I totally will. “What does my mother want? Does she have a message for me?”

“You’re quick,” she says, massaging her wrist.

There’s more than a familiar quality about her. I swear I’ve seen her before, those eyes, those lips.

“She wants to let you know there is a very real threat of losing something that is rightfully yours. Danger has fallen upon you like a shadow. It’s close. It’s time for you to be the person you were born to be. Run fast and hard, the race is yours to win. You’ll need much endurance, but if you educate yourself you can outwit your enemies.”

There’s a lengthy gap of silence.

“That’s it? That’s your basic pep talk like before a history test or a sample sale in the fashion district. There’s got to be something more.”

She pulls a face at my oversimplified analysis.

“That’s it,” she adds, rather bored. “One more thing, and this is just from me.”

I nod in anticipation.

“You and my brother,” she sighs. “I really like you. Be extra nice to him. Trying times have come, but he really does love you.”

“He loves me?” I examine her fully—smooth pale skin, translucent as rice paper. I can see her veins ever so slightly along her jaw, around the hollow of her eyes, an entire track of green and blue threads race across her eyelids. “What’s your name?”

“Giselle.” Something in her flares when she says it.

“Giselle? Did they used to call you Emerson? Is it Pierce that loves me?” I’ve clearly dislodged myself from any kind of reality I was loosely holding onto.

“My name is very much Giselle. I was hit by a car when I was three.” She spreads her hands out and sticks her tongue out the side of her mouth as an added effect causing me to shrink back a little.

She gets up and heads to the door. “That’s not my brother.” She flicks a finger over to where Nevermore sits mid air. She steps outside, leaning in to look at me one last time. “My brother is Gage.”

Chapter Seven

Love Me Tender

Marshall speeds down the stairs, still patting cologne on his neck. He’s wearing a t-shirt and sweats and looks about ten years younger, this never ceases to freak me out.

“You—” He snaps his fingers in Nevermore’s direction. “Be gone.”

“No,” I shout. “Let him stay.”

“I’m not talking to the bird.” Marshall slides the backdoor open and motions towards Nev. “Come now, you too.”

Nev glides over with his wingspan as wide as a baseball bat and flies out the door.

“So, you see ghosts like I see people? What do they look like?”

“They retain the impression of their former selves. Rotten ghosts,” he says in a mocking tone, “like that one, are tagged with a fowl spiritual odor—sort of a universal calling card, like excrement or urine.”

“Lovely.”

Giselle’s face looked pretty darn human. What if it was just some stupid prank from Chloe?

“I think I saw a ghost myself while you were upstairs. This girl came to the door and—”

“You let her in?” He narrows in on me.

“She was cold.”

“Ghosts neither need to be let in, or have their body temperature adjusted. Who did she claim to be?”

“A dead Oliver—Gage’s sister. She said she died when she was three.”

“Giselle,” he says it as fact. “And what did she want?”

“It’s true?” The hairs on my arms prickle to life.

“That’s true. However it doesn’t quantify what you saw as being true.”

“She said my birth mother sent her. So I guess that’s pretty quantifying, right? Anyway, she wants me to run a race and win what’s rightfully mine. Then she told me to be nice to her brother and took off.”

“Excellent.” Marshall lands hard on the couch next to me and wraps an arm around my shoulder. “Can we drop the subject now? I think I’ve had about enough of the living and the dead for one night.”

“I happen to fall into one of those categories.” I lean into him and let Marshall hold me. I love the steady intense rhythm that surges from him. He has a way of scrubbing away the grit of reality and replacing it with something simpler, far more relevant to the joy of my soul. “I can fall asleep like this.” I close my eyes and nestle my head into his shoulder.

“Then let’s.” He produces a white-cabled blanket from beside him and covers the two of us.

Really I thought Marshall would put up a sexual struggle. I thought for sure he’d slip the glibbery member that lurks in his mouth down my throat and give me a glimpse into another unwanted future event. But this? This is a nice change of pace.

***

Logan waits for me in my dreams.

It’s dark save for his countenance. His body is entombed in an otherworldly glow, provided by something much brighter than the sun, something that would make a fire jealous with its captivating reflection.

I should have figured he would be here. I should have asked Marshall to penetrate my mind with a shield of some kind to prevent this very thing from happening, although now that I’m here, under a sad frosted moon and full night sky of pink glittering stars, I don’t seem to mind so much.

We sit on a grassy knoll with an overgrown willow tree nearby. I listen as her branches whistle in the breeze like a wind-chime made of microscopic seashells.

Pretty. Logan smiles over at me bashfully.

Yes, it is, I answer.

I meant you. He carefully picks up my hand and scoots in closer.

So I guess everything changes for us now. My voice swirls in the night, encapsulates us with its sad broken whisper.

Nothing changes. I still love you, and I can feel your love for me, even though…

Even though I’ve painted it black with anger? I ask.

Yes, that. Logan pushes into a smile, and the right side of his face depresses into a long comma-like dimple. Even in my dreams, he wears his scar for me.

I run my fingers over the dent I left by way of a broken bottle. Still not sure how sorry I am, although I suppose it’s not his fault he was born a Count.

I’m going to visit my dad soon. I shrug. I say it more as a peace offering than anything relevant to the situation.

I’m planning on paying my parents a visit, too. I’ll go with you, if you come with me. I’d love for you to meet them. He pushes his chin into his chest uncertain of my reaction.

I don’t know. I’m sure Gage would come with me. You could probably talk him into going with you, too. Or Chloe, or Lexy, or Michelle, whoever the flavor of the month happens to be. I thought it was impossible, but there it is. I’ve managed to drag all of our relational garbage right into a perfectly good dream.

There’s no one else, Skyla, just you.

We lie back on the grass and stare at one another, puzzled. There might as well be prison bars between us. Not even in our dreams should we be together. How could I have been so deeply drawn to the wrong person? How could I still have an unrelenting ache deep inside that won’t let him go?

I love Gage. I’m going to marry him eventually. We both know it’s true. There’s not one ounce of sadness in me when I say it.

I know. His eyes dip down swallowed up in sorrow. But I know something else that’s true.

You do?

He nods.

Tell me. Even in my dreams I need to pull information from him, like extracting milk from a stone.

That our love is eternal. That it can never be broken.

I don’t ask if Gage told him that. I don’t want to know. I’m not sure whether or not I like the illusion of the kind of truth it projects, or the fact it could be a blatant lie.

He runs his fingers soft across my face, leaning in until our noses touch, and I close my eyes.

Logan dives in with a deep ocean of kisses. Kisses like a life raft, like a pool of shimmering water in the dry thirsty desert. I can feel the stars wrap their attention around us—peering down from their heavenly perch, riled up with intense jealousy at the purity of our love.

Wake up! Logan shouts.

I moan and push deeper into him. This dream—this is the only arena, the only microcosm of time that this eternal love will ever exist in.

Skyla! Wake up! It’s not me. Open your eyes—please!

I rouse to a warm body nestled to my side. Deep throaty kisses that linger and… oh crap!

I start to slide off the couch in a panic only to be pulled into another round of Marshall’s bad intentions.

Then a vision appears—me in the forest, running in the rain, arrows stream by, missing me by inches.

I get up on my elbows exhausted, far worse off than before I closed my eyes. I can see the sun coming up over the barn from out the back window.

“And I suppose that was my immediate future?” I pant into it.

“You suppose right.” Marshall pushes out a sigh.

“And do I get speared by these vagrant arrows?”

“You might. I believe the question you want to ask is, who was shooting them at you.”

“Who?” Pierce, Chloe, Mom, Tad, the list could go on forever.

“Me.” He gives a shameless wicked grin.

Chapter Eight

There’s No Place Like Home

Gage picks me up from Marshall’s early in the morning and drives me to Casa Count where I once laid my head secure, not realizing it held the promise of a guillotine.

“Happy birthday,” I say once again, carefully watching the Landon house as though it were a black widow lingering behind him.

“Thank you.” He gives a warm kiss that momentarily makes me forget about my harsh new reality.

“Come on.” He nudges me towards the house.

“I’m going to confront them,” I tense up as I say it.

“I wouldn’t do that, at least not yet. You’re holding all the cards, Skyla. Once you let it out that you know—things could change fast. And,” he pauses to run his fingers through my hair, “there’s always the chance they don’t know they’re Counts.”

I find this doubtful.

I don’t dare go in the house alone, instead, I secure myself to Gage and hold my breath as though I were heading into a minefield.

“Here she is!” Tad shouts craning his neck up towards the stairs.

My mother glides down in her pink bathrobe, the flap opening with every other step.

“Where were you?” She slits the words out.

“I was,” I look uneasily towards Gage, “with Brielle.” Is that right?

“Ha!” Tad barks pointing a finger at me. “See this, Lizbeth? We fork over hundreds of dollars for a birthday party, and she thanks us by blatantly spending the night with her boyfriend!”

Brielle and Drake come racing down the stairs, then abruptly turn around when they see me in the doorway.

Great.

“Mia ran next door to tell you something early this morning.” Imposter Mom hitches her hair behind her ear. “Darla said you weren’t there. What’s going on? Did you spend the night at the Oliver’s? Just the truth please.”

I look to Gage for answers. The truth is I don’t ever want to speak to these people again. In fact, I want nothing more than to rush upstairs and pack all of my crap and never lay eyes on any of them, not even Mia who I totally suspect turned me in on purpose because she’s a maniacal little Count.

“OK, let’s try this another way.” Mom’s voice spikes a little. “Gage—did Skyla spend the night at your house?”

“No.” He doesn’t even hesitate.

I firm my grip on his hand and move in a little closer. A sharp bite of perspiration explodes all over me at once, and for the first time ever I’m nervous just standing here, in the entry with the people I thought I knew so well.

“That’s too simplistic,” Tad scolds. “Were you in a hotel? His car? On the beach?”

“We weren’t together at all. I spent the night at Mr. Dudley’s.” I head upstairs to my room and pull Gage behind me.

“We’re going to finish this later!” The sound of my mother’s voice fills the void between the walls and sends a tremble of fear through me—as though it means something—as though a part of me still considers her an authority figure in my life.

I lock the door behind us, then push the dresser completely over the entry and give a mock smile. Now that I know they’re Counts I realize they can bust through, easy as toilet paper.

“You’re in deep.” Gage wraps his arms around me. A soft rumble of laughter ripples through his chest.

“They’re not my parents. Do you think there’s some kind of youth hostile on the island I can hole up in?”

“No, I don’t, nor would I send you there.”

“Can I live in the doghouse with Charlie? I won’t even eat food.”

“Charlie doesn’t have a doghouse. He’s an indoor dog, and you have to eat food. You were designed to be filled with delicious hot meals.” His dimples ignite on either side, and my stomach bottoms out.

“Thank you,” I whisper.

“For?”

“For making me feel safe.” I pull him over to the bed, and we sit down. Everything about my room feels foreign now as though it belonged to another girl—a girl who believed anything anybody told her. I feel lost, like the whole planet is swaying, and Gage is the only anchor to keep me from flying out into the atmosphere.

“I’ll always be here for you.” He tucks his head into my shoulder and gives my neck a string of soft kisses.

“Oh, hey.” I pull back a notch. “Did you have a sister?”

“Did I have a sister?” He gives a quick blink. “Yes,” he says, looking confused. “She died when I was five.”

“And she was three.” A surge of tears brim to the surface. “I’m sorry.”

“What about her?”

“I was at Marshall’s and this girl, she looked at lot like you, she came to the door and said she was your sister.” I tell him about the bizarre encounter. “And I think it really was her.”

His eyes glitter as fresh crimson tracks explode.

“I wish I could have been there,” he whispers.

“Yeah well, I have this distinct feeling she’ll be back. Don’t leave my side, and you won’t miss her.” I pull him up towards the headboard with me. “You know when I said I thought it was good idea to slaughter all the Counts?”

“No, but go ahead.”

“OK, so I may have been thinking it. Anyway, I had no idea it was going to include just about everyone, but you.”

“Do you really think Tad and your mom are aware of this? That they’re after you?”